In consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and President Bush's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, the FINRA Investor Education Foundation commissioned the first national study of the financial capability of American adults in 2009. The overarching research objectives of the
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Using the 2008 Survey of Chinese Consumer Finance and Investor Education and the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, this study compared saving motives between Chinese and American urban households. Results showed that Chinese households were more likely than American households to report
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Increased policy and academic attention has been placed on promoting retirement savings early in the life course. This study investigates the extent to which retirement savings behavior among young persons, a population for which retirement savings is important but typically low, differs by marital
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Audience: Individual Researcher Teacher

Type of Resource: Peer-reviewed

Tags: Family economics, life course, life events, marriage, retirement

Minority groups, particularly Hispanics and Blacks, are less likely to use formal financial advice compared to their White counterparts and have lower levels of financial literacy on average. This gap in literacy may have important implications for savings, investing, and retirement planning. To
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Traditional economic theory posits that people make decisions by maximizing a utility function in which all of the relevant constraints and preferences are included and weighed appropriately. Behavioral economists and decision-making researchers, however, are interested in how people make decisions
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Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which could cause
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This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to explore the mechanism that underlies the robust relation found in the literature between cognitive ability, and in particular numeracy, and wealth, income constant. We have a number of findings. First, the more valuable the pension, the
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Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which could cause
More information...

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to explore the mechanism that underlies the robust relation found in the literature between cognitive ability, and in particular numeracy, and wealth, income constant. We have a number of findings. First, the more valuable the pension, the
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This study conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) examines rates of participation in the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) in calendar year 2007 by ethnicity and gender. OPM found that minorities are less likely to participate in TSP (82.5 percent of minorities versus 87.8
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